R.E.M. sleep

i'm Today I slept for a little extra time and had a bizarre dream. It's amazing how much clearer things are, and how much more you just feel "yourself" after a good rest including lots of R.E.M. time. I'm about to wax extrememely geeky here, but there was a Star Trek episode I watched in high school where all the members of the crew were being deprived (by aliens I'm sure) of R.E.M. sleep, and they all started to go crazy. Wikipedia didn't have anything to say about that, but I'm wondering about the psychological effects of R.E.M sleep deprivation. I mean, today I woke up feeling creative and productive, with interesting ideas to spruce up my house (well, in Kim world, that means buying a cactus and some cheap Mexican art posters), and a good memory of some of the chores I need to finish before work. All this because I dreamed that American Idol auditions were held in an old church (interior painted two shocking shades of blue, with lots of those scalloped-edge bulletin boards in the Sunday School area), and that I missed auditions, but Simon let me sing for him anyway. I went backstage into an old theater, and stood on the stage while Simon sat in the house. He put me through to the next round, saying "it's definitely not your looks getting you through!"
I wonder if I sang in my sleep?

the other America

Just got done reading Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (thanks for the recommendation Conni!), a perspective-changing look at low-wage jobs in the U.S. The first-hand looks at working poverty were heartbreaking, and the futile efforts of a middle class, well-educated woman trying to live on a Wal-Mart worker's, diner waitress's, or Merry Maid's salary (or even combining the two, as she had to at times) were purely shocking. Even though I consider myself aware of the disparity between the poorest and richest lifestyles in the U.S., I was horrified. Not only were the jobs lower-paying, much of the work was literally backbreaking (most of her coworkers had repetitive stress, back, and leg problems from the motions of the jobs), while providing no insurance for such injuries. The work was also demeaning - at Merry Maids, she was forced to clean floors on her hands and knees. Though cleaning with a mop and hot soapy water would have been more effective (more shocking than the unpaid hours at the beginning and end of each day were the cleaning methods themselves, which gave only the image of clean, not the reality. They were not allowed to use more than a few inches of water at a time, which meant that nothing was ever actually sanitized.), she is forced to scrub in a posture that screams "servile" (in many ways that I won't go into, but she does, to hilarious effect). In the most moving passage, she describes a co-worker who cries against a kitchen counter - a shockingly thin 23-year-old woman who takes care of extended family at home has sprained her ankle. She doesn't want to call off work, because she is terrified of getting fired or even losing a precious day's pay. Ehrenreich imagines for a moment the person who will come home and slice gourmet breads on the counter, not knowing that the literal blood, sweat, and tears of another person have been spilled (and carefully cleaned up) in the same spot that day.